The meditation group participants spent an average of 27 minutes a day doing mindfulness meditation exercises. The MRI scans taken after the eight-week program revealed increased gray matter density in the hippocampus (important for learning and memory) and in structures associated with compassion and self-awareness. University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness ...

Unlike traditional tutoring services that seek to help students master a subject, brain training purports to enhance comprehension and the ability to analyze and mentally manipulate concepts, images, sounds and instructions. In a word, it seeks to make students smarter.

Hypnosis is a relaxed state-of-being induced by the power of suggestion from another person—or from oneself. In normal, everyday mental states, the mind is primarily informed by interaction with the external physical world. If we quiet the mind from the external reality, we are influenced by deeper communicative connections—which increase awareness and potentially facilitate activity beyond a person's normal activity—but within a person's ethical range of activity. In a hypnotic state, a person may be influenced by the hypnotist's suggestion—or by the self's suggestion for meta-programming.